


In Dreams I Drown

by wonderlandiscrumbling



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dreaming, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Illness, Mentions of addiction, Mentions of self-harm, Trans Oswald, season four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-27 05:57:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20943458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderlandiscrumbling/pseuds/wonderlandiscrumbling
Summary: Ed only finds real comfort in his drug induced dreams where he lives a life he can never have in the waking world.





	In Dreams I Drown

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written or even had much of the desire to write in quite some time, but the opening line of this just popped into my beer addled brain. I apologize for the stories I have left unfinished.

In dreams he can touch him. He can whisper sweet nothings against his lips, his breath warm against his skin. He can feel cautious unsure hands on his own body, calloused fingers that touch him reverently, a touch starved man desperate to feel and to be felt. In the safe blanket of night deep in drug induced slumber he can press his body flush against his, he can feel his heart pounding against his chest, he can count every scar and freckle and mark upon his skin. He’s touched them all with fingers and with tongue, he’s made him pray to a God he’s confessed he isn’t entirely sure exist. 

There is no hate, no fear. In the shadows his vibrant eyes of green and blue are full of endearment and love. He doesn’t flinch from his touch or the tone of his voice, there is no distrust. There is love and lust and it is boundless and endless, he finds himself upon his knees staring up at him wanting to worship at his very existence. He buries his face between his legs and makes him call out his name, feels fingers curling in his hair, short blunt nails scrapping against his scalp nearly drawing blood and he can’t help but moan at the stinging sensation of it. He tastes him and he is wonderful, his body is beautiful, a thing of wonder. He feels safe in his embrace, he feels a free with him. He feels free the way he does when he kills, but not him. Never him.

No in his dreams he’s never killed him, never laid a hand on him in that way. He’s only drawn blood through biting and scratching at the heights of ecstasy. 

To reach these blissful dreams it only takes a handful of pills, a cocktail of them. Deep down he hopes to take one too many. When the dizziness hits him causing his knees to buckle and for him to collapse before he even reaches his bed, he prays to a God who abandoned him at birth that this will be the day he dies. His dreams of a man who still loves him, of a man he didn’t shoot, didn’t torment or drive away are the one thing that comfort him and taunt him. He is addicted to his dreams the way he is to drugs and to self-harm, he wants to feel something, he wants to feel alive and real. He longs to feel happiness, to feel like the future is something to look forward to, but all he sees is darkness. He sees a woman who once was so brave and so well adjusted now ruling over the Narrows, her eyes darkened as she stares over her empire of filth. The same woman he loves in a sense, but could never love completely, and she could never love him. He sees her and he knows one day he’ll kill her, because he destroys everything he attempts to love and protect. He can protect them from everything but never from himself.

When he dreams is when it’s all okay again, he can jump two years back and fix his mistakes. He can make his move, kiss the man who saw him when absolutely nobody else has. 

The trouble is the waking, waking alone on a mattress on the floor, he wakes to the sound of car alarms outside on the street, drunks gathering down below. His makeshift bedroom is a mess, his desk and nightstand littered with pill bottles and beer bottles, his head throbs and he longs to scream until his lungs give out. When he wakes, he cries, he bites down on his hand until he breaks the skin and even then the urge to scream and to claw at his own face is unbearable. He longs to live in dreams, the ones where he is a man worthy of love, where he is a man who is capable of giving the love that those unlucky ones attempt to give.


End file.
